YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Thanks to a little birdie we'll call Benny the Bluebird we've learned that hair challenged Oscar winning actor Nic Cage is flipping a lavish Middletown, Rhode Island estate he scooped up only last year. A recent report in the Boston Globe and a little look-see at the current listing tells Your Mama that the trophy property mad Mister Cage, a man whose real estate portfolio seems to be in constant flux, has put the 26.77 acre estate on the market with an asking price of $15,900,000, which is just $200,000 more than he paid for the historic Craig Road residence.

Built of stone and textured brink in the late 1920s and called Gray Craig, the monumental house spreads over four floors and measures in at a robber baron pleasing 24,664 square feet.

Because we're crazy that way, we spent an hour or more pouring over the online floor plan provided by the listing agent and we counted 28 rooms, 15 fireplaces, 4 stair halls including a spectacular circular foyer with a sweeping high-drama staircase, at least 27 closets including a cedar one on the third level that is larger than many Manhattan studio apartments, a gymnasium with attached bath and sauna, 2 kitchens, 3 beverage bars/pantries and 2 laundry rooms. Although listing information states there are 12 bedrooms and 10 full and 3 half bathrooms, we counted 10 bedrooms in the main house with another 3 in an attached guest house or staff quarters, and 9 full and 2 half bathrooms in the main house with another 2 full poopers in the guest house/staff quarters. Whatever the case, the tri-winged behemoth is plenty large for Mister Cage can easily house his family and whatever entourage he carts around with him.

The main floor includes a 1,134 square foot, two chandelier living room, a smaller and more intimate reception room off the circular foyer, a 43-foot long barrel vaulted library that is rather sadly furnished with a super shiny and ship sized dining room table and a horrid flat screen boob-toob mounted to the meticulously maintained paneling above the fireplace, a long dining room that appears to have a silver leaf ceiling (although we're not sure of that), a glass conservatory, and a large kitchen and keeping room, all of which are connected by a wood paneled central axis hallway and all of which have wood burning fireplaces. Guests are free to use either of the powder rooms off the main hallway, one of which is done up and did over with pink paneling and gold accents that would surely please Marie Antoinette.

Behind the kitchen is a two story, seven room guest house or staff wing with separate entrance, kitchen, living room, den, three bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Two wood paneled guest bedrooms complete the main floor and share a huge renovated and mosaic tile wrapped bathroom.

In addition to the home gymnasium with its private bathroom and party sized sauna, the second floor features five gigantic bedrooms each with their own fireplace and private terlit room. The third floor offers two more bedrooms, the above mentioned cedar closet, a large undefined room and a gargantuan 2,100+ square foot "theatre" room with an impressively high and steeply pitched roof line. Curiously and unfortunately, there is no bathroom on the third floors which renders the two bedrooms up there only for guest comfortable peeing in bedpans.

Accessed by a steep and wickedly curving staircase, the lowest level includes a brick floored billiard room, laundry facilities, a vault for the furs, jewels and cash on hand, and two more bedrooms each with their own fireplace and terlit room.

It's unclear to Your Mama if Mister Cage and his much younger wifey Alice Kim purchased the massive mansion fully furnished, partially furnished or unfurnished because some of the photographs used in the current listing appear to be the same as those that appeared in the listing from when Mister and Missus Cage purchased the property. Whatever the case, the current day-core seems inconsequential given that the sure to be filthy stinking rich new owner(s) will likely want to put his or her own decorative stamp on the heavily detailed rooms of the mansion.

Mister Cage has lately been divesting himself of some of his luxury properties having sold off his waterfront mansion in Newport Beach, CA for a reported $35,000,000. More recently he listed a 14,306 square foot house located in a gated community in Las Vegas, NV for $9,500,000 and his legendary Bel Air mansion is currently on the market with an asking price of $29,000,000 (reduced from its earlier asking price of 35 million smackers).

Mister Cage owns many other properties, too many to list here in their entirety. Suffice to say he's got at least one house in San Francisco, at least one in New Orleans where he owns the infamous and creepy LaLaurie House, several in Britain including a townhouse in Bath and a recently purchased Gothic castle outside of Bath and some reports say he also possesses a 40+ acre private island in the Bahamas but we don't have any first hand knowledge or property record proof of that.

It's beautiful. How nice for someone like Nicholas Cage who obviously loves owning numerous wonderful homes that he has the money to do so. I would just hate to have to sell a gorgeous estate like that if I was ever able to afford it!

That may be, but you certainly don't have Rough Point and The Elms. Little old Rhode Island has managed to preserve its architectural glory. It is sad that California seems to reinvent its architectural heritage more than the rest of the country.......perhaps it is the wealth and emphasis on youth in everything. I just enjoyed a wonderful book on the Houses of Los Angeles and was astounded and sad to learn how many of them have been razed.

I don't understand Mr. Cage's tendency to buy/hoard/sell outsized residences but we all have our cross to bear. I can't really fault him for it because he must single-handedly provide a small army of maids and landscapers with jobs maintaining his odd collection.

I would take it, but it would take a lot of time, effort, and additional money to make it a place I'd ever want to spend the night in. I love the bones of the structure and the layout, but some of the rooms just feel sadly out of date. That's most obvious when you see the kitchen addition wing and realize that it's likely where the family spends most of their time. The rest of the house doesn't look like a comfortable place to live. It looks like the kind of house where most of the rooms are shut off most of the time. And what's with the metal beams in the theater?

And seriously, it looks like the only shower in the entire place is off the gym. Baths are nice, but not every day.

Great find. I go to Newport/ Middletown all the time and I had heard that he had a house there, but I never knew where it was. I was a bit curious since he's one of my favorite actors. I have seen this house many times on Lila Delman's site, so I'm glad I finally know who's it is and where it is now!